The effect of speaking club activity on ELT students' foreign language speaking anxiety

Anxiety, which is both a psychological and sociological phenomenon, can affect the learning process positively or negatively with some physical reactions and psychological effects it creates in the individual. Speaking skill, which plays an important role as one of the basic communication methods in language learning, cannot reach the desired level due to speaking anxiety in a foreign language. The purpose of this mixed-method study is to examine the level of English speaking anxiety experienced by native Turkish EFL learners and the effects of English Speaking Club on students' 'English Speaking Anxiety'. The universe of the study consists of university students studying in the department of English language teaching throughout Türkiye. The sample of the study consists of 61 first-year English students at a state university selected by convenience sampling method from the student group in the universe. The Public Speaking in Classroom Scale (PSCAS) developed by Yaikhong and Usaha (2012), demographic form, pre-test and post-test, semi-structured interview and student experience forms were used as data collection tools. Quantitative data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 26 and qualitative data were analyzed using constant comparison method. The findings showed that the experimental group had lower levels of foreign language speaking anxiety (FLSA) both before and after the intervention, and that there was no significant relationship between FLSA and age and school of graduation, while the relationship between gender was significant. In addition, while no change was observed in the FLSA level of the control group after the intervention, a tendency was found in the direction of decrease in the experimental group. Finally, conclusions about the effects of the intervention on students' speaking ability and speaking anxiety and recommendations for further research on similar topics were given.